Daily Reading for Sunday, December 8th, 2024

Reading 1, Baruch 5:1-9

¹ Jerusalem, take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of God's glory for evermore,

² wrap the cloak of God's saving justice around you, put the diadem of the Eternal One's glory on your head,

³ for God means to show your splendour to every nation under heaven,

⁴ and the name God gives you for evermore will be, 'Peace-through-Justice, and Glory-through-Devotion'.

⁵ Arise, Jerusalem, stand on the heights and turn your eyes to the east: see your children reassembled from west and east at the Holy One's command, rejoicing because God has remembered.

⁶ Though they left you on foot driven by enemies, now God brings them back to you, carried gloriously, like a royal throne.

⁷ For God has decreed the flattening of each high mountain, of the everlasting hills, the filling of the valleys to make the ground level so that Israel can walk safely in God's glory.

⁸ And the forests and every fragrant tree will provide shade for Israel, at God's command;

⁹ for God will guide Israel in joy by the light of his glory, with the mercy and saving justice which come from him. A copy of the letter which Jeremiah sent to those about to be led captive to Babylon by the king of the Babylonians, to tell them what he had been commanded by God:

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6

¹ [Song of Ascents] When Yahweh brought back Zion's captives we lived in a dream;

² then our mouths filled with laughter, and our lips with song. Then the nations kept saying, 'What great deeds Yahweh has done for them!'

³ Yes, Yahweh did great deeds for us, and we were overjoyed.

⁴ Bring back, Yahweh, our people from captivity like torrents in the Negeb!

⁵ Those who sow in tears sing as they reap.

⁶ He went off, went off weeping, carrying the seed. He comes back, comes back singing, bringing in his sheaves.

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